(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a powdery antiadhesive material to be mixed with water upon use, having excellent operability in medical scenes, and an excellent antiadhesive effect with biological tissues.
(2) Description of Related Art
Adhesion refers to a condition that continuity arises between the organs or the tissues that are originally located close to each other but liberated from each other. Post-operational stitch adhesion is one of the artificially occurring inflammatory adhesions, and is a complication developed by an operation at a high probability although its degree is variable. While adhesion is not problematic when no symptom is present, it sometimes causes abdominal pain, ileus, sterility and so on, and hence various measures have been taken for preventing adhesion.
Conventionally, for preventing adhesion, a method of covering the incised and sutured site with a film-like or gel-like antiadhesive material is employed. In particular, a gel-like antiadhesive material is advantageous over a film-like antiadhesive material in that it is easy to be closely adhered to the incised and sutured site, and is difficult to be peeled off, so that it can facilitate the technique in clinical scenes. As conventional gel-like antiadhesive materials, compositions containing polysaccharides such as alginic acid, carboxylic acid group-containing compounds and water (see JP 2003-153999 A) and the like have been reported.
Considering the operability in clinical scenes, the gel-like antiadhesive material desirably has high fluidity for administration to the incised and sutured site, but it desirably has low fluidity from the viewpoint of preventing adhesion. Thus, the required fluidity is contrary between the operability in clinical scenes and for the antiadhesive effect as described above. However, conventionally reported gel-like antiadhesive materials cannot adequately satisfy both the operability in clinical scenes and the antiadhesive effect because they are given in a gelled state having certain fluidity as a result of preliminary mixing a gelling agent with water.
In the context of such conventional art, it is strongly demanded to develop an antiadhesive material designed to have fluidity varying with time in such a manner that the material exhibits a gel form of high fluidity at the time of administration, and the material exhibits a gel form of low fluidity after it is administered to an incised and sutured site.